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The "bumpy" road…

February 23, 2009 in parenting, Philosophy with 4 Comments

Recently, my son and I went to my in-laws to work on their computer.  On the way back, he asked, “Daddy, are we going to go on the bumpy road?”  Let me stop here: he classifies roads into one of two categories – bumpy and blue.  The bumpy ones are the concrete interstate roads – quite a comment for our friends at the DOT, but that’s not the point – just interesting.  The asphalt roads are the blue ones.  He prefers the blue ones – especially when we take my 4×4 truck to go places – because they are smoother and don’t jar his tiny brain around as much.  My in-laws live in a community that is on the other side of the AR river and we have to cross the river using a bumpy road to go back and forth.

Resume story:
I answered, “Yes, we have to go back on the bumpy road to get home.”
“Why?” (imagine a 3-yr old whine there).
“Because that’s the only way to get from here to home.”
He countered with, “But I don’t like bumpy roads.” (pitiful-meter at full tilt now)
“I’m sorry, but there’s not another way home.”

This exchange happened to resonate with me at another level right there in the truck.  I thought about life and how bumpy it can be and how at times, I long for a stretch of blue road every once in a while.  Even more profound is the thought that we must endure the bumpy roads to get HOME.

God didn’t design life with only blue roads for a host of reasons, but one that I was reminded of is that the bumpy roads make me look forward to home that much more.  Hope in heaven is lost on me most of the time as I’m such a “here, now” guy, so I’m glad that God uses those around me (my kids especially) to help me glance up and out from time to time.

How about you – is it time to look toward something rather than enduring the here and now?

It's harder when you're old…

October 15, 2008 in adoption, parenting with 2 Comments

Taking care of babies is a young man’s sport and I’ve never felt older.  I’m not sure what changes I thought this baby would bring to our home life, but exhaustian, frustration and selfishness weren’t anywhere on the list.  Don’t hear me wrong, Graceanna has brought a bunch of other things too – good things like life, newness, joy and gratefulness just to name a few, but caring for a newborn is hard.

Because we adopt our children, we get to “share” the effort of feedings throughout the night.  We’ve tried several permutations of how this works – from one night on and next night off to “you take first shift and I’ll take next”…alternating style, which is what we’re using today.  The good news is that the baby is healthy and eating well, which lessens the craziness that could be.

Another challenge I didn’t fully know to anticipate is moving from a zone to man coverage.  Our older child is a great young boy, but boy nevertheless.  He loves his cars and riding bikes and running, climbing and jumping.  Sitting still and playing quietly in the corner aren’t part of his nature, which I’m glad for on the one hand because I like boys to act like boys – it gets a bit much to handle when you are at the very end of your capacity to string two sentences together, much less engage a 3-yr old in the way he needs.

But, by God’s grace and our own self-preservation instincts, we’ll make it through.  Brighter days are ahead – at least they better be.  For now, we’re in survival mode and survive we will.

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